


all of what is past

by straightforwardly



Category: Train of Afterlife (Visual Novel)
Genre: Gen, Post-Ending Six, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 20:47:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8938525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/straightforwardly/pseuds/straightforwardly
Summary: Post-Ending Six, “A Neverending Story”. Time has rewound, and Wind finds herself at the beginning again. Except this time, there is no Wing.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Reishiin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reishiin/gifts).



> Because the only thing better than one bad end, is two spliced together.

Once Little Mary leaves, Wind presses her forehead against the cool glass of the window, her eyes closed. The last twelve hours blare hot in her memory; they stand behind her, and yet, inexplicably, before her as well.

She wonders where Wing is.

She promised to never leave her, and Wind _needs_ her now. Or has that promise been undone with the rest of time as well?

—No. Perhaps Mary has been rewritten, and Bluebird, and perhaps Diyu and Darwin as well— but not Wing. It’s impossible. Wing said so herself: she sees what Wind sees; she knows what Wind knows. 

As she thinks this, she realizes: someone’s standing behind her.

Wind turns, full of joy. “Wing—!”  


* * *

  
A monster hovers in the air before her.

It tastes like Wing.  


* * *

  
Wind flees, gasping, for the sixth seat where Little Mary is. Kind, thoughtful Mary— she may not be Wing ( _where is Wing? The monster didn’t—no,_ no _, she would_ know), but she’s still—

Still—

The word slips out of her reach. 

She falls into the seat besides Mary. Only then does she dare to look behind her. Her heart pounds. 

The monster is nowhere to be seen.

“Is something wrong?” The shadow of Mary peers up at her, concern thick in her voice.

“Did you see the monster?” Wind asks. 

“A monster?” asks Diyu from the other seat, and something about the sight of her unvanished shadow clutches at Wind’s chest.

“You didn’t—?”

The air is calm again; there is no sign that what she saw was anything more than a dream.

No sign, except for the absence of Wing.

“Perhaps you need to rest,” says Mary.  


* * *

  
She leads Wind back to her seat. She presses no hand to Wind’s forehead, and offers no helping hand. There is no touch between the shadows here; Wind realizes this only now, twelve hours past.

No one waits for her at her seat. No monster— and no Wing.

Mary leaves her there, and Wind watches as she crosses the aisle to Bluebird. She knows how this will go: Mary will be left thoughtful, and then, in less than a handful of hours, she will vanish.

Wind sits. Always when she returned here before, Wing had been waiting for her. She has no body, no true name; all she has are twelve hours and nine tarot cards full of memories. In all of her existence, she has never been more than a few minutes on her own.

Sitting there without Wing is unbearably lonely.

She looks out of the window.  


* * *

  
When she looks back, the monster is waiting for her.

“Wind,” it says in Wing’s voice. “Wind, why are you running. Wind, Wind—”

(WIND WIND WIND WIND WIND WIND WIND WIND WIND WIND WIND WIND WIND WIND WIND WIND WIND WIND WIND WIND WIND WIND WIND WIND WIND WIND WIND WIND—)

(WHY ARE YOU RUNNING?)  


* * *

  
The voice echoes horribly all around her. Wind clasps her hands over her ears— ( _no, no, no, where is Wing—? Where is Wing?_ )— she gasps, closes her eyes—

When she opens them again, she finds herself collapsed in the seventh seat. Her hands are in her lap; her heart is pounding.

Once more, the monster is nowhere to be seen.

“Speedy little thing, aren’t you?” Darwin, across the way from her, sounds amused. “It’s Wind, right? What’s got you so worked up?”

She needs Wing. (She doesn’t think about the memory of the monster’s voice.) She needs Wing, but Darwin— Darwin’s—

(The sound of clattering pebbles. Footsteps over wet grass.

The moon, luminous and large before her eyes.)

“Did you see the monster?” she asks instead. ( _Where is Wing?_ )

Darwin starts. “A _monster_?! What— oh, you’re joking.”

She’s not joking. Is she? 

She’d thought the train so peaceful when she’d first come there twelve— now almost thirteen— hours before. Now the walls press in on her, Wing is missing— and the other shadows with her see nothing at all.

( _“What kind of glasses do you wear when you see the world?”_ )

There’s no sign of the monster now. A joke, a dream—?

There’s no sign of Wing, either. 

She sits there a little while longer.  


* * *

  
Perhaps she sleeps. When she next looks up, there is no one sitting across from her. 

“Darwin—?”

Darwin couldn’t have vanished yet. It hasn’t been long enough. Has it?

She looks across the aisle to the sixth seat. It too lays empty.

She walks down the corridor, to the ninth seat.

Bluebird isn’t there either. The tarot cards lay scattered over the seat.

She’s alone.

This isn’t how it went last time. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go. 

“Wing?” she whispers. She needs Wing. She conjures up an image of her in her mind instead, of the way Wing used to smile at her, happy yet eerie—

—But in all those long years together, Wing’s smile had never been eerie, only ever bittersweet. 

She’s shaking.

She looks down at Bluebird’s seat and realizes: thirteen cards lay before her.

Thirteen, when there should be twelve. The Star, the Sun. The Devil, the Angel. The Balance.

And the Fool.

She’d already had her nine cards.

But that was twelve— no, thirteen now— hours ago, in a time now undone.

( _“Speaking of thirteen— is that a lucky or an unlucky number?”_

 _“—Perhaps only a fool can tell.”_ )

She takes the card in hand—  


* * *

  
—And Wing’s voice rises from behind her in laughter.

There is no memory.

Wind turns, and sees the shadow of the monster uncovered. Its veins pulse; its many eyes bulge.

“Wind,” says the monster.

“Wind,” says Wing’s voice.

“Why did you run? Why did you run? Why did you run?”

The voice fills her up. Fills all of her empty places, everywhere where Wing should be ( _where is Wing?_ ), until it is all that there is. 

Until all she can do is stand, frozen in place, and let herself drown in the sound of Wing’s voice.

“Why did you run? Why did you run? Why did you run? Why did you run? Why did you run? Why did you run?”

“ _Why didn’t you keep dreaming?_ ”

**Author's Note:**

> When replaying this game, I couldn’t get the thought, _what if the monster and Wing are one and the same?_ out of my head. After all, the monster appears at the same time Wing would have— and girl!Wing’s smile is described as “eerie” at one point. And so this story was born. 
> 
> I did quote directly from the game (and, specifically, from Wind’s conversations with Wing) at two points.


End file.
